GRUNDTVIG Learning Partnership “Queer Health Care" Project

The GRUNDTVIG Learning Partnership “Queer Health Care" will bring together eight European equality organizations working in adult education with the goal of exchanging knowledge and developing strategies to improve health care support of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex people.

Summary

Through "Queer Health Care", each partner organization will take turns hosting working meetings that include activists (staffers and regular volunteers). The goal of these meetings will be to bring together participants to share models of good practice and to exchange methods that facilitate better access to health care, better knowledge on specific health issues related to gender and/or sexual identity and how to promote health care that is appropriate and sensitive to the identities and experiences of diverse LGBTI people, especially intersectional LGBTI people and their needs.

The result of the GRUNDTVIG Learning Partnership will be an e-brochure with examples of best practice in different European contexts and legal advice. This resource will focus on advocating for accessible, well acknowledged, non pathologizising health care and be published and disseminated to LGBTI related activists and organizations. Another result of this partnership will be the increased visibility of LGBTI through public meetings with health care providers, medical students and trainees. This engagement will enable adult learners and staffers to learn methods of reaching various audiences who only have limited knowledge (if at all) of the inequality in health support especially intersex and trans people face all over Europe (e.g. forced sterilisation for trans citizens undergoing gender reassignment procedures, limited access to health care, non consensual surgeries of new born babies).

LGBTI persons, and especially trans and intersex persons still face large scale discriminatory treatment and medical assistance not acknowledging their specific needs. The available evidence suggests a pressing need to not only educate more broadly on LGBTI related health care demands and needs, but also to target medical practitioners to encourage positive engagement with the LGBTI communities across Europe.

Accept-LGBT Cyprus aims to raise public awareness and increase the visibility of LGBTI individuals in Cyprus through public meetings with health care professionals, medical students and trainees. Through Accept’s work it became evident that there is a stressing need to increase the awareness among the Cypriot public and health care providers about trans and intersex individuals. A project like this one will strengthen the capacity of the organization in providing educational trainings for medical practitioners and encourage the development of allies in the health care system for the facilitation of competent and non-discriminatory medical treatment, thus decreasing discrimination and marginalization, and increasing awareness and quality of life of LGBTI individuals.